


Opus

by CelesteArius



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:30:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelesteArius/pseuds/CelesteArius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here was a man unafraid to get into a cab with a murderous cabbie and play a game of chance with his life. Here was a man who knew almost everything about almost anyone by a mere glance. Here was a man that John was hopelessly in love with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opus

Life with Sherlock Holmes was incredibly strange, enigmatic and unbearably… well, unbearable. When John Watson first agreed to be flat mates with the strange, deductive man, he really had no idea what he was getting himself into. Other than the fact that he knew Sherlock could practically read a person's life by the way they stood or the condition of their phone, John didn't have a lot to go on. Mike Stamford had said he was always like that, but John couldn't decide at first whether this was a good or bad thing.

The addiction to stress was something John never realized he had until he met Sherlock. Their first case together – "A Study in Pink" as he had so appropriately named it – left John particularly perplexed on his flat mate. Here was a man unafraid to get into a cab with a murderous cabbie and play a game of chance with his life. Here was a man who knew almost everything about almost anyone by a mere glance.

Here was a man that John was hopelessly in love with.

It may have begun on that first case, as he ran – without remembering his cane, effectively losing his psychosomatic limp – behind Sherlock after a cab with only a tourist in the backseat. (If only they had known that the killer had been the driver, how differently things may have turned out.)

Or it may have begun when Sherlock saved both him and Sarah when they were taken hostage by the Tong. It had, sort of, been a bad rescue, with Sherlock nearly being strangled and Sarah nearly being shot through the chest with a crossbow.

Whenever it was, John Watson found it hard not to admire Sherlock's quirky wit and undeniable charm. Watching Sherlock, no matter what he was doing, was never boring. Whether it was watching how calm and collected he looked when he was in his mind palace or when he was just lying on the couch with three nicotine patches on his arm. Or, in the few times he actually slept, how peaceful and beautiful he looked.

And, God, the way he played the violin.

When John would have nightmares of Afghanistan, and wake up twisted in his sheets and panting, covered in sweat, he would stare at the ceiling, trying to calm his breathing. And from below him, in the living room, up would drift the sweet, sad notes of Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor, one of his favorites. It calmed him to no end and he would fall asleep to blissful dreams of dancing with Sherlock to the same song.

Maybe that was why. Why when Sherlock jumped, it had felt like his heart was tearing in two.

There was simply no way in hell Moriarty was some paid actor, meant to be the primary antagonist to the game Sherlock was playing. There was no way in hell Sherlock could be a fake. No, Sherlock was his best friend,  _not_  a liar, not a fake.

The day Sherlock died, he went home to Baker Street, sitting in his chair and gazing listlessly at Sherlock's, hoping that any moment, he would hear him bounding up the stairs, ready to tell him about a new case. Or just something. Just something to get rid of this silence.

He took that violin, that precious violin whose notes – no, whose owner, had soothed him to sleep so many times in the past, and held it against his chest.

Never again would someone play this violin as beautifully as Sherlock. Never again would Sherlock inadvertently be  _there_ to sooth him from the nightmares.

Never again would Sherlock… be  _there._

It was at that thought that he first cried, his tears dripping from his chin to his shoes and the floor below. The violin was pressed tightly against his chest and he could hear the phantom notes of Chopin, trying to sooth away a nightmare that was so very real.


End file.
